Eliminating misspent defense dollars is frequently cited as a
remedy for reducing military spending. Such proposals ignore the
fact that eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse has historically
proven to be a rel­atively modest source of savings compared to
the overall defense budget. In addition, substantial pro­grams
already exist to root out unnecessary spending. While government
should, of course, take every responsible measure to ensure it is a
good steward of our tax dollars and provide the best support for
our men and women in uniform, procedures to guard against waste
should not be so restrictive that they undermine efforts to
innovate and adapt to national security challenges.

There are no simple solutions to meeting the press­ing
fiscal demands for defense. Even if it were possi­ble to
identify and eliminate all unnecessary spending, total savings
would not come close to clos­ing the gap for what is required
for maintaining a trained and ready force, funding current
operations, and preparing for the future. The next Administration
should focus its efforts on ensuring adequate budgets to field a
robust military.

Coupled to this effort should be a campaign to secure greater
savings in defense spending by initiat­ing prudent acquisition
reform and reducing man­power costs and entitlement
programs--the real obstacles to getting the "biggest bang for the
buck"-- stretching defense dollars to get the most at the least
cost. Even with these savings, however, the U.S. mili­tary must
avoid another "peace dividend" and main­tain a military
adequate to meet its national security needs by spending at least 4
percent of its annual gross domestic product (GDP) for the next
decade.[1]

The Past Is Prologue

Allegations of fraud, waste, and abuse have always plagued
defense contracting. Indeed, it has been observed that cost and
schedule instability have remained problems in the acquisition
process dating back to the American Revolution.[2] Among the most
notable were:

In the North, during the Civil War, Congress was so enraged
over reports of fraud by companies supplying the military that it
established a spe­cial committee to investigate
corruption.

During World War I, the Senate launched a num­ber of
investigations into a $640 million aviation appropriation (not
adjusted) that promised to fill the skies over Europe's trenches
with American planes, and which produced almost none.

In the years between the World Wars, the House Military Affairs
Committee believed the Army to be rife with corruption. One
complaint resulted in the investigation of an officer in charge of
parachute development who tried to steer busi­ness to a firm in
which he had a financial stake.[3]

The Special Committee of the Senate to Investi­gate the
National Defense Program (the Truman Committee) investigated fraud,
waste, and abuse during World War II.

During the Vietnam War, the construction firm Brown & Root
had the preponderance of con­struction projects in the
country--and a public relations problem as well. Antiwar
demonstra­tors called the company "burn and loot." A report by
the General Accounting Office (GAO, now the Government
Accountability Office) charged Brown & Root with
unaccountability of funds. Congressional critics cited the company
for fraud and corruption.

The results of investigations in every case proved to be a
mixture of poorly defined require­ments, mismanagement, and
malicious activity, but also problems resulting from the "fog of
war," a plethora of challenges that complicated rushing goods and
services into the field. The purchase of combat aircraft during
World War I offers a case in point. Had the war not ended abruptly
in 1918 (before U.S. industry geared up to produce planes)
government contracts might not have appeared so wasteful. On the
other hand, even if the entire pro­gram had been written off as
fraud, waste, and abuse, it would have represented only a fraction
of the 5.1 percent of GDP the United States spent annually on the
war.

Battling fraud, waste, and abuse is not only a wartime endeavor.
Wars, during which there is always pressure to spend money fast,
offer perhaps the greatest opportunity for malicious exploitation
of government spending. In peacetime, when the normal rules of
procurement and oversight can be implemented in a more deliberate
manner, there are fewer opportunities for exploitation. Ironically,
it is often when the nation is not pressed by conflict that
promises are most often made to gain huge savings by driving
unnecessary spending out of the defense budget. Such efforts to
trim spending, however, offer an equally ambiguous legacy.

Been There--Tried That

Eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse is an obliga­tion of
government, and rightfully so. Washington should do everything
possible to spend Americans' tax dollars efficiently and
effectively. Many tools already exist to root out such practices,
and the new Administration and Congress should start by mak­ing
aggressive use of the means already at their dis­posal. Such
efforts, however, are not a panacea. They have been made on a
recurring basis since the Eisenhower era. Even where they produce
real reform and results, historically, going after fraud and waste
have garnered at best a modicum of sav­ings when compared to
the overall defense budget.

Following the Vietnam War, Congress became increasingly
concerned with and attentive to instances of fraud, waste, and
abuse in the defense sector.[4] Since that time, 128 studies have been
con­ducted to address perceived problems with the defense
acquisition system and to tackle fraud, waste, and abuse. Many of
the same problems that exist today are problems that have been the
target of reform for the past four decades. Indeed, a 1999 study on
cost growth in defense programs analyzing three decades of reform
concluded that "despite the implementation of more than two dozen
regulatory and administration initiatives, there has been no
substantial improvement in the cost performance of defense programs
for more than 30 years."[5]

Following his election as President in 1968, Richard Nixon
convened the Fitzhugh Commission to study the problems plaguing the
military's acqui­sition process. The commission rejected the
"total package procurement" model used by Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara and helped to initiate efforts to slow development
projects, introduce more testing, and minimize production
concur­rency. Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard used
the Fitzhugh Commission's findings along with his own experiences
to form the Packard Ini­tiative in 1969. One major result of
this process was the creation of the Defense Systems Acquisition
Review Committee (DSARC).

Continued problems in the acquisition process, including public
reports about the Department of Defense paying for $600 toilet
seats and $400 ham­mers, prompted President Ronald Reagan to
estab­lish the Packard Commission in 1985 to help reduce
inefficiencies in the defense procurement system. Thomas McNaugher,
at the time working for the Brookings Institution, reflected on the
irony of the situation: "Indeed, the public has a right to some
frustration when the same David Packard who fathered the last
significant reforms of the acquisi­tion process, upon being
called back to Washington to head his own commission on acquisition
reform, starts his first press conference by noting that things are
no better now than they were when he first entered the Defense
Department nearly two decades ago."[6] The commission concluded that
the primary problems with the acquisition process were the same
ones identified in previous decades: cost growth, schedule delays,
and performance shortfalls. Many of its recommendations were
included in the Gold­water-Nichols Reorganization Act of
1986.

The 1990s brought much of the same story, including the
Performance Review, the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, the
Federal Acquisi­tion Improvement Act, and the Defense Review
Ini­tiative. The information revolution of that period also
kicked off efforts by the federal government and the Defense
Department to adopt innovative business models to help streamline
the acquisition process. The 1996 Quadrennial Defense Review
promised cost-savings, concluding that "by imple­menting
modern...business practices"the Defense Department could "be
leaner, more efficient, and more cost effective in order to serve
the warfighter faster, better, and cheaper."[7]

By the new millennium and the commencement of global operations
to fight Islamist radicals fol­lowing the attacks of 9/11, the
same narrative on acquisition reform continued to persist. In June
2005, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England authorized the
Defense Acquisition Per­formance Assessment Project.
Unsurprisingly, the report concluded in 2006 that it saw "many of
the same issues as problems today that the Pack­ard Commission
saw 20 years ago."[8] Many of its recommendations were included
in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review.

Calls for eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse are nothing new,
nor an innovation in defense plan­ning. Historically, where
they are done well and pursued vigorously, they have improved
defense management and incurred some savings. They have not,
however, allowed the Pentagon to substantially reduce its defense
costs.

Rules of the Road

The result of the efforts of the past four decades to improve
the acquisition process is that govern­ment contracting is now
highly regulated. Regulat­ing begins with the Federal
Acquisition Regulation (FAR). The impetus for standardizing and
simplify­ing government acquisition came from President Reagan,
who followed through on an election-year pledge to eliminate 2
percent of the federal budget by cutting fraud, waste, and abuse in
federal spend­ing. What he wanted was a process that was
sim­pler and that saved taxpayers money.[9] FAR was one of the
first steps the President took. By implement­ing FAR and by
encouraging Congress to enact fur­ther legislation, Reagan did
far more to institute policies to keep the private sector in its
place than has any other modern President. Many of the tools
available today trace their lineage to the Reagan era.

Created in 1984 to make government contract­ing policies
uniform, FAR involves virtually every acquisition by every federal
agency, governing every step of the process. Every department has
added its own supplementary implementing guidelines. The Pentagon,
for example, issues the Department of Defense Federal Acquisition
Regulation Supple­ment (DFARS). All government departments must
include dozens of "standard terms and conditions" dictated by the
regulation--many of them non-negotiable. Mandatory federal
conditions also include imposing standards of ethical conduct on
contractors. Contractors are barred from making false claims or
statements to the government (such as over-billing or charging for
services not pro­vided), are required to establish procedures
pre­venting conflicts of interest in dealings with federal
employers, are prohibited from offering or accept­ing
"kickbacks," and are prevented from using appropriated government
money for lobbying.

Only federal contracting officers have the authority to enter
into, administer, or terminate fed­eral contracts. The specific
scope of a federal con­tracting officer is described in a
written permission to perform contracting duties, called a
"warrant." Unlike in some commercial practices, in Washing­ton,
there can be no debate over who has authority to manage or amend a
contract.

FAR and the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 (another
Reagan-era initiative to ensure that taxpayers received good value
for their dollars) require "full and open competition" for
govern­ment contracts. There are, however, certain
allow­able exceptions to this rule. FAR indicates seven
circumstances in which the Defense Department may, to certain
degrees, waive the requirement for full and open competition. If
the Secretary of Defense finds that a process of open solicitations
and bids might compromise national security, or if a national
emergency exists, other alternatives can be employed.[10]

In some cases, the government can simply agree to sole-source
contracts, which are not subject to competition at all. Sole-source
and limited-compe­tition contracting represented a legitimate
effort to speed support to the field--not an end-run around
regulations. FAR specifically allows agreements to limit
competition under certain circumstances. These contracting methods
have been readily used by Democratic and Republican Administrations
and funded by Democrat- and Republican-controlled Congresses since
FAR was established. Indeed, these kinds of contracts were
specifically intended for use in unforeseen contingencies such as
in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The federal government also audits federal con­tracts. By
law, Washington has the authority to audit the costs incurred by
contractors as well as their profits, progress, and performance
during the period covered by the agreement and for up to three
years after the conclusion of the contract. The government has many
tools with which to take to task contractors that go wild. In Iraq,
audits and investigations can be conducted by a contracting
agency's Inspector General, by the Special Inspec­tor General
for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), by the Army Audit Agency, by the
Defense Contract Audit Agency, and by the GAO. Senate and House
com­mittees have also launched their own investigations and
held uncounted hearings on government con­tracting during the
war. All of these institutions have in fact been very busy. In the
first four years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the GAO alone
issued 68 reports and testimonies.

The government can also avail itself of a wide range of criminal
investigation tools. Virtually all federal agencies have an
internal law enforcement component; the defense services, for
example, have criminal investigation divisions. The Department of
Justice can also support efforts to uncover criminal activity on
the part of contractors and government employees. Contractors
failing to abide by ethical standards or other requirements in
their contracts can face civil litigation or criminal prosecution,
as can civilian employees of the U.S. government. Mil­itary
personnel are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and
can in some cases also be tried in civilian courts.

Although many agencies have undertaken enforcement activities,
SIGIR has the largest criminal fraud investigation in Iraq. On any
given day, the Inspector General has 30 investigators, auditors,
and inspectors on the ground in Iraq. By March 2008, SIGIR had
issued 108 audit reports that were responsible for $58 million in
savings and $40 mil­lion that has been put to better use;
issued project assessment reports that covered reconstruction
projects worth $1.265 billion; produced 14 indict­ments, 14
arrests, 5 convictions, 9 individuals pend­ing trial, and over
$17 million in fines, forfeitures, and restitution; and was
currently conducting 50 ongoing investigations into fraud, waste,
and abuse involving contracts in Iraq.[11] Accusations involved
fraud, money laundering, and bribery, and individu­als
convicted included both civilians and U.S. mili­tary personnel.
The Army barred 14 contractors and companies from operating in
Iraq, and by 2007, SIGIR had referred another 12 for debarment.

As a result of the volume of alleged criminal activity in the
Iraqi theater, various government agencies worked together to
formalize the Interna­tional Contracts Corruption Task Force
(ICCTF) to investigate and prosecute cases of contract fraud and
public corruption. The participating agencies in the task force
include the Defense Criminal Investi­gation Service, Office of
the Inspector General, Department of State, FBI, Special Inspector
General for Iraq Reconstruction, Office of the Inspector General,
and the Agency for International Develop­ment. As a result of
the investigations initiated by the Task Force, nine Americans and
one non-Amer­ican have been convicted and a total of $9.84
mil­lion has been paid to the U.S. in restitution.[12]

Even individual citizens can tackle fraud. The False Claims Act,
a law passed in 1863 to help fight corruption during the Civil War,
is intended to pun­ish anyone who makes a "false claim" against
the government in the act of fulfilling a government contract. In
1986, the act was amended to make it easier to bring an action to
court as part of President Reagan's effort to fight wasteful
government spend­ing. Under the law, individual citizens are
permitted to sue on behalf of the government alleging fraud on the
part of contractors. If the lawsuit is successful, the private
parties bringing the suit are awarded a portion of the proceeds of
the action or settlement.The defendant can be liable for up to
three times the damages sustained by the government, as well as
$5,500 to $11,000 in fines for each false claim made. From 1987 to
2005, the Justice Department received almost 8,869 cases, most
involving either defense-contract or health-care fraud. [13]
Since 1986, the government has recovered over $17 billion under the
law.

Flexibility and Innovation: When
Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Are Fake

There are no universally accepted means of determining levels of
fraud, waste, and abuse, mak­ing efforts to quantify claims
difficult. Promises of savings by cutting programs are usually
based on broad assumptions and generalizations. As a result, the
process of identifying and targeting misspend­ing is often
overlaid with political judgments and conflicting expert
opinion.

It is not uncommon for cases of fraud, waste, and abuse to be
improperly identified. For example, cost overruns, shifting
requirements, and a volatile secu­rity environment often
combine to force decision makers to reassess ongoing programs.[14]
What is often considered waste is in many instances the result not
of inefficiencies in a system that can be overcome by proper
oversight, but the by-product of an atmosphere that constantly
forces planners to remain adaptive. Programs that are scaled back
or terminated, while technically considered waste, are more
appropriately recognized as unavoidable costs resulting from the
need to remain flexible.

One of the best examples of the challenges of defense
acquisition was illustrated in a 1999 case by the National Defense
University (NDU) that com­pared the procurements of the civil
aviation Boeing 777 and the military C-17. While the two aircraft
represented similar technical and developmental challenges, their
acquisition histories differed mark­edly. It took 15 years to
field the initial operating capability for the Pentagon's C-17. It
took five years to develop the commercial Boeing 777. According to
the NDU study, the most significant differences between the two
programs resulted from the com­plex challenges of defense
acquisition. The govern­ment had much more difficulty
determining and meeting requirements. Political squabbling and
shifting defense priorities delayed approval. As the study's author
A. Lee Battershell concluded, "[p]olitical influence, the annual
funding process, and out-of-date design tools all limited DOD
flexi­bility."[15] As a result, the Defense Department,
lack­ing the commitment and focus of the private-sector
project, took three times as long to field a compara­ble
aircraft. This project characterizes the nature of defense
procurement.

The acquisition process is riddled with these types of examples,
According to Thomas McNaugher, "[t]he uncertainties of technology
development give rise to an odd notion of 'efficiency' in
development. Waste in development is almost unavoidable
some­where along the path of developing a new system, wrong
turns will be taken, to be exposed only by testing and further
development."[16] "Efficiency in development means
'wasting' money early, when the cost of resolving uncertainties is
low, and when financial and production commitments have not crowded
out the chances for flexibility."[17] Attempts to identify this
"productive waste" as waste that can in fact be prevented will help
foster a risk-averse culture that impedes the research and
development process and may only drive up costs further.

Additionally, cost overruns to ongoing programs, while difficult
to determine, are likely to occur in volatile security
environments. Not only might con­tractors have to be paid more
than originally envi­sioned, but delivery of materials and
completion of the project may also be affected by unpredictable
violence. The fog of war is often the greatest "cost-driver" of
them all. A program to manage the Iraq Basrah Children's Hospital
in 2004 offers one exam­ple. While originally projected to cost
$50 million, costs reached between $149.5 and $169.5 million. Even
though a number of factors were determined to have caused the
overruns, the issue of security in a city known for its instability
cannot be underap­preciated for the impact it may or may not
have had on the waste accrued by the program.[18] Such cases are
more typical than not.

Achievable Reforms

While a modicum of fraud, waste, and abuse have always plagued
defense spending, every effort should be made to identify and
eliminate wasteful spending. A proper oversight of contracting
begins with funding an acquisition workforce that is prop­erly
sized and trained to manage the number and complexity of contracts
that exist today. Further savings can be achieved by initiating
reform in both the defense acquisition process and manpower
compensation system.

The first line of defense in ensuring that gov­ernment
contracting serves the government well is formed by contracting
officers, part of the fed­eral acquisition workforce. While the
number, size, and complexity of government contracts has exploded,
the workforce to manage them has remained at inadequate levels,
reduced in the 1990s by Congress to realize greater savings. Like
other components of the military, the defense acquisition workforce
was downsized at the end of the Cold War. From 1994 to 2005, the
Defense Department acquisition workforce was reduced by 50 percent.
Further adding to this problem, by 2010 half of the acquisition
workforce will be eli­gible to retire.

The reduction in the Defense Department's ac­quisition
workforce, coupled with the increase in private-sector service
contracts (72 percent increase from 1996 to 2005), has ensured that
adequate oversight is unavailable to guarantee taxpayer
dol­lars are being used appropriately.[19] Adding to this
problem is the fact that only 38 percent of total Army acquisition
or contracting personnel in-theater are certified for the positions
they hold.[20] This problem was foreseen more than a
year before the war in Iraq began, when the Secretary of the Army,
Thomas E. White, wrote to the Undersecre­tary of Defense in
charge of acquisition to point out that a third of the service's
budget went to pay contractors. With a much smaller military
workforce, White asserted, "Army planners and programmers lack
visibility at the Departmental level into the labor and costs
associated with the contract workforce and of the organizations and
missions supported by them."[21] This, it seems, was
clearly evident before the Pentagon went on its contracting binge.
A GAO official confirmed this view in testimony before Congress,
reporting that the Army could have benefited from greater savings
in the Army's Logistics Civilian Augmentation Pro­gram (LOGCAP)
contracts in Iraq had adequate staffing been available. Because of
staffing short­ages, acquisition officials were unable to visit
all contracting sites in Iraq to ensure requirements were being
upheld.[22]

To improve acquisition oversight, the Commis­sion on Army
Acquisition and Program Manage­ment in Expeditionary Operations
recommended that the Army increase the stature, quantity, and
career development of its contracting personnel. As part of this
effort, the Committee suggested, among other things, expanding the
number of civilian and military personnel in the contracting
workforce by 1,000 and 400, respectively, and ensuring that Army
contracting personnel start their careers much earlier than is
normally the case.[23] According to Dr. Jacques Gansler, the
committee chairman, the acquisition workforce "has not been
properly sized, trained, structured, or empowered to meet the needs
of our warfighters, in major expedition­ary operations." For
its part, the Army accepted the Gansler commission's
recommendations.[24] To ensure proper oversight in
contracting, the Army and Congress should work together to
implement these recommendations in a timely manner, and commit to
maintaining the size and quality of acquisition personnel in the
future.

Reasonable Acquisition Reform

The Defense Department must be allowed to break free from the
risk-averse behavior patterns that undermine innovation, slow the
acquisition process, and result in inefficiency and inevitable
cost-overruns. Congress, with its propensity to sec­ond-guess
the Department of Defense on procure­ment management and
intervene in the acquisition process with funding restrictions and
earmarks, is a major contributor to this problem.[25] Congress must
also resist the temptation to conduct show-hearings unless a
hearing can reveal shortcomings in the acquisition process that
will help initiate leg­islative change.[26]

Overregulation is another problem that has cre­ated entry
barrier to the defense market. An effort to deregulate would make
it easier to enter the market, increasing competition and improving
overall effi­ciency and cost savings.[27]

Finally, restoring a balance between R&D and procurement,
with procurement accounting for no less than 60 percent of the
modernization budget, would provide incentives for contractors to
push programs out of development and into the hands of the
military.[28]

Rethinking Manpower Compensation

The current trajectory of the military's compen­sation
system is both unsustainable and unafford­able. This
out-of-date system is wholly unresponsive to the recruiting and
retention needs of the military. For instance, unlike in the
private sector, the military places an emphasis on in-kind and
deferred benefits, as opposed to cash benefits. As research has
clearly shown, military personnel value cash compensation more than
its alternatives, and are likely to undervalue their true earnings
because of thePentagon'sskewed emphasis on non-cash compensation.
Moving toward a system that values cash is the first step toward
building a com­pensation system that is able to meet the needs
of today's highly mobile workforce.[29]

More important, the military should seek to build a "continuum
of service" that would elimi­nate barriers to transition
between active and reserve status while retaining flexible health
care and retirement packages. A new health care system could offer
a defined-contribution plan in place of the current, rigid,
defined-benefits plan. This sys­tem would improve the freedom
of soldiers to make choices concerning their health care, while
introducing greater responsibility into the system and creating
greater cost savings overall. Similarly, a new retirement system
should be constructed as a portable system that absorbs
contributions from the military, private sector, and portions of a
sol­dier's Social Security taxes.[30]

More Than a "Bumper Sticker"

The modern era of defense acquisition reform and other efforts
to tackle fraud, waste, and abuse is riddled with numerous
commissions, studies, and "blue ribbon" reports that offer models
for reform and promise large cost-savings. However, both historical
and recent examples of fraud, waste, and abuse during wartime
remain limited in scope and relatively small compared to total
spending. The fact remains that various governing mechanisms and
regulations are in place to limit fraud, waste, and abuse. While
the Administra­tion should make every reasonable effort to
reduce unnecessary defense spending, these efforts alone will not
free up sufficient resources to adequately fund defense.

Indeed, a much larger potential for savings that could stretch
defense dollars will more likely be found in responsible reforms
that:

Rebuild the government contract workforce-- the people and
technologies needed to make government a better customer;

Adopt realistic acquisition reforms that address the imbalance
between research and procure­ment and do not hamstring
government's ability to be adaptive and innovative; and

Undertake the challenge of restructuring man­power
compensation to preserve the affordability and the utility of the
all-volunteer force.

In short, the new Administration and Congress should take
further steps to address this problem by improving acquisition
contracting services, initiating a defense acquisition process that
aims to break free from risk-averse behavior patterns and restores
a proper balance between procurement and R&D, and adopting a
manpower compensation reform package that brings greater freedom to
the warfighter while simultaneously improving recruiting and
retention.

James Jay Carafano,
Ph.D., is Assistant Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom
Davis Institute for International Studies and Senior Research
Fellow for National Security and Homeland Security in the Douglas
and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage
Foundation. Eric Sayers is a research assistant at The Heritage
Foundation.

[1]Parts of this paper are adopted from James Jay
Carafano, Private Sector, Public Wars: Contracting in Combat,
Afghanistan, Iraq and Future Conflicts (Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 2008).

Share

Government should take every responsible measure to eliminatefraud, waste, and abuse. Historically, when executed well andpursued vigorously, initiatives to target fraud, waste, and abusehave improved defense management and incurred savings, but notallowed the Pentagon to substantially reduce its defense costs.Washington must focus on ensuring adequate budgets to field arobust military.

Key Points

1 Government should take every responsible
measure to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse.

2 Congress and the Administration should rely
on existing tools; further overregulation will
undermine innovation, slow the acquisition
process, and result in inefficiency and inevitable
cost-overruns.

3 Historically, when executed well and pursued
vigorously, initiatives to target fraud, waste, and
abuse have improved defense management
and incurred savings, but not allowed the Pentagon
to substantially reduce its defense costs.

4 Savings that could stretch defense dollars will
likely be found in responsible reforms that
rebuild the government contract workforce—
the people and technologies needed to make
government a better customer–and adopt
realistic acquisition reforms that address the
imbalance between research and procurement
and do not hamstring government’s
ability to be adaptive and innovative.

Key Points

Government should take every responsible
measure to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse.

Congress and the Administration should rely
on existing tools; further overregulation will
undermine innovation, slow the acquisition
process, and result in inefficiency and inevitable
cost-overruns.

Historically, when executed well and pursued
vigorously, initiatives to target fraud, waste, and
abuse have improved defense management
and incurred savings, but not allowed the Pentagon
to substantially reduce its defense costs.

Savings that could stretch defense dollars will
likely be found in responsible reforms that
rebuild the government contract workforce—
the people and technologies needed to make
government a better customer–and adopt
realistic acquisition reforms that address the
imbalance between research and procurement
and do not hamstring government’s
ability to be adaptive and innovative.

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